Category: Artists’ Books

I’ve been working on a project with Oriel Wrecsam and students/staff from Glyndwr University to make a portable, multi-functional space inspired by the ad-hoc, flexible structures of market stalls. Finally, on Wednesday 25th November, it will be leaving the University and is getting trundled down to the gallery by a group of students…. come and join us/see the work if you can. Starting at the art school at 1pm.

A zine with contributions by a number of brilliant folk will also be launched at the move so thanks go out to Andrew Gannon, Paul Heppell, Dave Jones, Paul Jones, Steffan Jones-Hughes, Josie Moore, Hugh Sanders, Rosalie Schweiker and Jilliene Sellner for their contributions.

The official bit: Built by Emily Speed and Paul Heppell, WORK / SPACE was commissioned by Oriel Wrecsam and will travel around the town and in particular the People’s Market, changing function as it goes. The work will be open for proposals to be used to exhibit work, hold performances, readings, discussion groups and intimate screenings for an audience of one.

Made from furniture bought at the People’s Market, the work was made in response to the gallery’s Space and Place strand – thinking about location and site while the gallery moves site to a new space. Taking the ad-hoc, mobile and adaptable structures found in indoor and outdoor markets, the work is designed to be comprised of seating, display, storage and perhaps other uses yet to be added..

Last month I spent two weeks at Troy Town Art Pottery working on some new ceramic pieces as a collaboration with Ben Cove. Updates to follow when they have been taken out of the kiln (if they all survive..)

I’ll be going quiet for a while to get into the studio, do some writing and to finish off a few new editions. I will be back on 5th February next year with a wearable sculpture work for an event at the Wellcome Collection.

As it’s International Women’s Day it seems like a good time to mention that I shall be off to the states in May and June for six weeks to work on a Rosendale Cultural Crossroads Public Art Residency in New York State with Women’s Studio Workshop. I did one of my first ever residencies at WSW back in 2007 and made a limited edition artist’s book called ‘Unfolding Architecture’. I am thrilled to be going back! The picture below (a detail from Masaccio’s Saints Jerome and John the Baptist) is a tiny clue to what will be going on when I am looking at the relationship people in the town have with the architecture there.

I also have a group show coming up in April called Indefinable Cities but more about that soon…

The artists featured in Silence Unbound often work in familiar forms, but have at some point been driven to create or conceive of an object that incorporates their language into a book-like design. The juxtaposition of the book next to an artwork- painting, print, photograph, or performance ephemera- is meant to delineate a space that considers the translation of the artist’s aesthetic vocabulary into writing systems. Featured Artists include: Dean Ebben, David Hammons, Candace Hicks, Christopher K. Ho, Jenny Holzer, Alison Knowles, Jessica Lagunas, Matthew C. Lange, Dani Leventhal, Barbara Rosenthal, Buzz Spector, Emily Speed, and Kristen Tordella-Williams.

I just found out that the Library of Congress in Washington is going to be a repository for all books published by Women’s Studio Workshop in New York. I published ‘Unfolding Architecture’ with them in 2007 and I am still very proud of it, and I have fantastic memories of my time there.

The book is still available for the bargain price of $200 from their website (7 weeks of hard graft letter-pressing and screen-printing went into making them!).

“These works examine the relationship between the visual elements and literary devices at play and emphasize the correlation between meaning and metaphor. They were selected based on three criteria: the approach to craft tradition and the conceptual motivation, the source of the content, and the materiality of the language. The purpose is to trace the heritage of these components back to the artist’s overall practice, most of them working with familiar forms, and to question the ways in which the information is being transmitted and consumed”

On the 22nd Jan I will be heading to New York where I am to be on a panel for a seminar about artists’ books at the Grolier Club. This is happening alongside an exhibition of works from the Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) collection, entitled ‘Hand. Voice & Vision’. The book which I worked on at WSW in 2007, Unfolding Architecture, is part of the exhibition and I have also written a short text for the exhibition catalogue.

My time at WSW doing the Artists Book residency was really incredible and I am really looking forward to catching up with the staff at the seminar, as well as meeting the other artists on the panel. I also have plans to meet the guys from WAGE, to profile them for a-n’s March issue. I’ll be leaving some space in the suitcase for letterpress ink and drawing papers from the Drawing Center!!

Mercy have put Cardboard Folly in their top five collaborative projects of the year in an article that’s just been published on creativetimes.co.uk. Flattered. I should also take the opportunity to apologise for not having a PDF of it online yet. Each issue takes a couple of hours to assemble, so the poor artists have not even had their copies yet! Soon, very soon!